


Happy Birthday

by Fleurisse



Category: Diablotin
Genre: Gen, Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Veterans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3475793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleurisse/pseuds/Fleurisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gen celebrates her twenty-third birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday

The day Gen turned twenty-three dawned as bleak and cold as her future. She had specifically requested to have the eleventh day of Eleventh-month off. Birthdays and holidays were the hardest; she knew she would be in no fit state to work.

She started drinking even earlier than usual. By early afternoon, she was passed out on her cot in the tiny closet of a room that she called her home. She dreamed of birthdays gone by. The first one she remembered was her third birthday. Of all the things that might have happened that day, the one clearly preserved memory she had was of peeling and eating a hard-boiled egg for breakfast and setting it down on a hand-thrown stoneware plate with a funny molded face. Her parents were with her, and she felt safe and loved. 

Then there had been the year she turned seven; it had been a few months since Dorien had returned to Diablotin with his parents, but as a birthday gift he’d sent her a child’s book of scientific experiments she could try at home. She had read that book cover to cover in front of the fireplace on that day, and done one experiment per day after that, until she had done every single one the book had described. 

The year she turned twelve had been the year that Andri gave her the little wooden horse he’d carved out of her oak’s fallen branch. He’d been so proud; she could see his face glowing with life, his smile standing out bright against his suntanned face.

And the year she turned fifteen was the year her parents had decided she was old enough to carry out the important business of taking their produce and carefully carded cashmere to market by herself. She’d felt so grown-up that year, so trusted by her parents.

Then the flames started licking at the corners of her mind, growing swiftly until they nearly obscured her vision, blinding her to everything save the funny molded face plate, the science book, the wooden horse, the farm, and her family. These she witnessed cracking, blistering, shrivelling and blackening before her very eyes as the flames engulfed them. The screams of her burning family and the livestock filled her cranium and threatened to crack it open, too. 

Gen woke up screaming.

“Shut the fuck up!” her neighbour shouted over the din of crying babies and her fist pounding on Gen’s door. “You’re scarin’ my kids.”

Just like that, Gen’s paralyzing sense of loss flared into a towering rage. She reached out for something, anything, to throw at her door. The sound of glass shattering and skittering across the floor was extremely satisfying. “You shut the fuck up!” In three paces, she was at her door, wrenching it open even as she ignored the pain in her feet from slicing them open on shards of glass. “I lost everyone and everything so that your stinking, squalling brats could continue eating olive oil and lemons at a loss to the farmers who grew them!” Gen roared at the woman, knowing full well as she did so that it wasn’t really fair. Like herself, the people who lived in the tenement block could scarcely afford luxuries such as olive oil and lemons. The woman’s face paled and she hunched protectively over one of her young twins. Gen could not bring herself to care or to rein herself in, even though she knew she would regret it later. She still had to live with these people. “I forfeited my soul to commit state-sanctioned murder over and over and over so that you and your doddering emperor could maintain the illusion that the fabric of this empire is whole and unstrained… so that he could sit on his throne and continue believing he is the most powerful person on the planet. So if I have nightmares about the hell I’ve gone through for you people, I will fucking well scream if I want to!” Gen slammed the door in her neighbour’s face, crossed over the minefield of her shattered liquor bottle once more and threw herself onto her bed, sobs wracking her chest as she tried to regain control of herself.

Eventually, the tide of unmanageable emotions left her drained, feeling only the dull throb of her physical pain. The constant susurration in her head could at times, she mused, almost be soothing as it repeated “we’re one, we’re one” with each beat of her pulse. She sat up and began pulling splinters of glass from her feet. She’d bled all over her floor and bedsheets. She would have to clean that up before she drank her second bottle, or she’d only do more damage to herself.

And why not? Her gaze slid to the glittering mess she’d created. It would be so easy to take one of the larger shards and slide it along her forearms, opening up her veins. It would be a much cleaner, more peaceful death than she had granted to so many Psyrenes. The chorus of voices grew louder, reproach evident in its tone, although its words never changed.

“No, no. I know. That’s the coward’s way out,” Gen whispered to no one in particular, feeling tears well once more. “But if we _are_ all one, if I am one of you, if you are always with me, then why the hell do I feel so completely and utterly alone?”


End file.
